Erik Lamberts

“I have always been a plodder, a person who anguishes and struggles over each sentence, and even on my best days I do no more than inch along, crawling on my belly like a man lost in the desert. The smallest word is surrounded by acres of silence for me, and even after I manage to get that word down on the page, it seems to sit there like a mirage, a speck of doubt glimmering in the sand.”
― Paul Auster, Leviathan

“For the fact is that it takes a great deal of self-confidence for a person to poke fun at himself, and a person with that kind of self-confidence is rarely a fool or a bungler.”
― Paul Auster, Leviathan

“Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom